After last year’s difficult Miami GP for McLaren, they are bringing new upgrades into the weekend. In Baku last year McLaren brought in an upgrade that saw them into the next race in Miami, in which the Piastri and Norris finished in P17 and P19 respectively as a painful start to 2023 continued.
With the 6th race of the season approaching this weekend, McLaren isn’t in an awful position in the standings, especially in comparison to this point last year, with their drivers in 5th and 6th and the team in an overall 3rd, but there is definitely room to move up the ladder and improve the weaknesses of the package.
When asked about this weekend’s new upgrades and his excitement surrounding them, the 23-year-old is confident they should be a solid gain as the Woking-based squad attempts to close in on Ferrari in the Constructors’ Championship.
“I think it should be a good step forward, hopefully. That’s always what you want from updates on the car.
“Obviously on a Sprint weekend, it makes it a little bit more difficult to get the most out of them, because you’ve only got one practice session, but yeah it should hopefully be a decent step forward.
“I think last year we had some upgrades in Baku, which was the race before Miami, and then we had a shocker here last year. So we’ll have to wait and see if this track kind of suits us, because last year we chopped and changed quite a bit.
“But yeah, hopefully it does what it’s supposed to do and that would be good.
“I think it’ll be a decent step forward. I think, trying to stay on the trajectory from last year is what we’re aiming to do.
“But obviously as you get closer and closer to the limit of these cars and these regs, it becomes harder and harder to do. So we’ll see.
“But yeah, I think the upgrades we pulled off last year always worked well. So yeah, hopefully we can have a similar kind of effect this year.”
The key to reaching P1 in not only the races but the standings this year is to attempt to defeat the Red Bulls, which we have only seen Carlos Sainz do in the Sunday feature races since last year.
Andrea Stella, team principal of McLaren, spoke on how he believed McLaren would be capable of challenging the Red Bulls next season if they get their development right.
Piastri was also questioned on his thoughts on what the team needed to do to catch Red Bull. He explained that the RB20 is a strong car with no real weaknesses, but he believes McLaren is constantly approaching a level to be able to challenge them.
“I think for me, the Red Bull is a very strong car in general. It doesn’t really seem to have a major weakness. It’s just strong in all areas. So I think that’s what we need to be able to do.
“I think we have some certain areas that are weaker for us than some of our competitors, which we’re trying to address.
“I think we’re getting closer and closer. I think at points last year we were very close at a couple of tracks. But, yeah, clearly we’re not the well-rounded package Red Bull is at the moment. So, I think we’ve still got some work to do, obviously.
“The upgrades this weekend are trying to help us with that. But, yeah, I think, with the trajectory we’ve had, if you look at us 12 months ago, to where we are now I think we’re in great shape and hopefully later this year and into next season we can start to start the challenge a bit more.”
Piastri also stated that it makes no difference for him whether Sprint weekends are back-to-back or spread out through the year as he will still “attack the weekend in a similar way”, although in his eyes “some circuits are better for sprints than others”.
Approaching this weekend’s on-track sessions, the question remains about how much McLaren’s upgrades will benefit them and if they can fight for the podium spots with the Ferraris. We have seen the Woking team slowly encroaching on Red Bull with Norris’ P2 last time out in Shanghai.
But can they beat them? And if so, when? Time will tell.
